Lunch at the Labs

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• Guardian interview with Daniel Kahneman

  Daniel Kahneman: 'Clearly AI is going to win. How people are going to adjust is a fascinating problem'

  I think there is less difference between religion and other belief systems than we think. We all like to believe we're in direct contact with truth. I will say that in some respects my belief in science is not very different from the belief other people have in religion. I mean, I believe in climate change, but I have no idea about it really. What I believe in is the institutions and methods of people who tell me there is climate change. We shouldn't think that because we are not religious, that makes us so much cleverer than religious people. The arrogance of scientists is something I think about a lot.

• How The Brain Learns and What Can Go Wrong | Jeff Hawkins

  Center for Inquiry (CFI) video talk on youtube.

  In this talk, Hawkins goes in depth into what we know about how the brain learns new information. What are the implications of being an intelligent species? I’ll describe how the brain learns a model of the world, and how our beliefs and perceptions are based on this model. I will discuss what can go wrong, how the brain can form false beliefs and why it doesn’t always behave rationally.

  Also a related youtube video at Part Three: Human Intelligence | A Thousand Brains by Jeff Hawkins

• Klan We Talk? | Daryl Davis | TEDxCapeMay

  How he persuade KKK Members To Give Up Their Beliefs?

  A young African-American musician seemed an unlikely candidate to take on the Ku Klux Klan - but Daryl Davis used honesty, respect and human understanding to break down and dissolve the bitter, time-worn barriers that he encountered.

• Reducing administrative costs in US health care Assessing single payer and its alternatives

  Conclusion. Although moving toward a single-payer system will reduce BIR (billing and insurance-related) costs, certain reforms to payer-provider contracts could generate at least as many administrative cost savings without radically reforming the entire health system. BIR costs can be meaningfully reduced without abandoning a multi-payer system.

• Drinking any amount of alcohol causes damage to the brain, study finds

  "The more people drank, the less the volume of their gray matter," Topiwala said via email.

  "Brain volume reduces with age and more severely with dementia. Smaller brain volume also predicts worse performance on memory testing," she explained.

  "Whilst alcohol only made a small contribution to this (0.8%), it was a greater contribution than other 'modifiable' risk factors," she said, explaining that modifiable risk factors are "ones you can do something about, in contrast to aging.

• Ajit Pai promised cheaper Internet-prices rose faster than inflation instead

  Average home-Internet subscriber's price rose 14 percent in Trump era.

  The average US home-Internet bill increased 19 percent during the first three years of the Trump administration, disproving former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai's claim that deregulation lowered prices, according to a new report by advocacy group Free Press.

  The 19 percent Trump-era increase is adjusted for inflation to match the value of 2020 dollars, with the monthly cost rising from $39.35 in 2016 to $47.01 in 2019. Without the inflation adjustment, the average household Internet price rose from $36.48 in 2016 to $46.38 in 2019, an increase of 27 percent.

• Fix the Court

  Nine judges appointed for life to a court that makes its own rules and has disdain for openness and transparency.

  • Term Limits. Supreme Court justices should serve no longer than 18 years, after which they'd serve on lower courts and/or fill in on SCOTUS when there's an unexpected vacancy.
  • Code of Ethics. Supreme Court justices should be bound by the same code of ethics that all other federal judges are required to follow.
  • Stocks and Recusals. Supreme Court justices should not own individual stocks and should generally be more thoughtful about potential conflicts of interest.
  • Financial Disclosures. Supreme Court justices should submit consistent, detailed financial disclosure reports each year and publish them online like top government officials in the other two branches.